Pokemon GO Friends Feature Not Working for Everyone

By Dalton Cooper 27 June 2018

Pokemon GO has been rolling out the new friends feature to players worldwide, but it’s not working properly for everyone. For some Pokemon GO players, the friends feature is failing to take into account when a new daily activity is completed with a friend, meaning players aren’t able to upgrade their friend level.

This issue has been brought up by fans online, and while it doesn’t seem to be all that widespread, we encountered it in our own testing. What’s strange about the problem is that the friend players are interacting with may still get credit and increase their friendship level, but not vice versa. This essentially throws the friendship levels out of sync with each other.

While this issue may be frustrating to players who are trying to utilize the new friend system, and who hope to one day trade legendary Pokemon without spending 1 million stardust, Niantic is at least aware of the issue. In the meantime, the studio has also offered a possible workaround so players can get back to increasing their friend levels.

According to Niantic, players need to keep completing activities with the person whose friendship level won’t upgrade for them. This means players should repeatedly send this individual gifts, in addition to going with them to battle in gyms and fight in raids. In our own testing, this workaround didn’t fix the issue, and the friendship level still refused to increase.

As previously stated, this problem doesn’t appear to be all that widespread, but it’s still a glaring problem with the new friends feature. What makes it more frustrating for affected players is that the friends feature is tied to Pokemon trading, and unless players are able to improve their friendships to “best friend” status, they are looking at impossibly high stardust requirements to trade legendary Pokemon with one another.

It’s understandable that some Pokemon GO fans may be frustrated by this issue with the friends feature, but at least Niantic is aware of the problem and working on a solution. In the meantime, players can attempt the workaround suggested by Niantic, as they may have better luck than we have so far.